In the packaging industry, it is common practice in the continuous packaging of product to transfer the product to a position between two sheets of polymeric or plastic material and to form a package by sealing about the periphery of the contained product once it is within the confines of the overlying and underlying plastic wrapping material.
While it is a relatively simple matter to obtain a seal along the continuous outer edges of the overlying sheets of plastic material, it is a more difficult task to obtain sealing of the individual packages between units thereof, especially in high speed packaging operations since in this processing step, the overlying sheets of plastic material that contain the product must be sealed and cut rapidly and virtually simultaneously to meet the speed demands of such high speed packaging equipment.
A variety of systems have been suggested in the prior art for obtaining such cutting and sealing of the intermediate portions of plastic packaging material over and under wrapped about a unit of product. While no such systems are described specifically herein, suffice it to say that they have been largely either quite bulky because of the division of the cutting and sealing operations into two separate steps or relatively slow when compared to the packaging line speed overall attainable without the rather slow cutting and sealing operation.
Thus, there remains a need in the art for a short cycle, rapid and accurate cutting and sealing device that can meet the demands of high speed packaging equipment.